were nearly silent, all but Julia and a stylish blonde, whom Barton had never seen before.  They were gathered around a cloud and tangle of women’s mysterious fabrics, whose names are as unknown to men as their uses.  Most of the young girls suspended their examinations and rippling comments, and, with a little heightened color, awaited the approach of the enemy.  He came on, and gracefully bowed to each, was permitted to take the hands of two or three, and greeted with a little chorus of—­“You have come back!” “Where have you been?” “How do you do?” Julia greeted him with her eyes, as he entered, with a sweet woman’s way, that thrilled him, and which enabled him to approach her so well.  She had remained examining a bit of goods, as if unaware of his immediate presence for a moment, and he had been introduced to the strange lady by Kate Fisher as her cousin, Miss Walters, from Pittsburgh.

Then Julia turned to him, and, with a charming manner, asked:  “Mr. Ridgeley”—­she had not called him Bart, or Barton, since her return from Boston—­“Mr. Ridgeley, what do the girls mean?  Have you really been away?”

“Have I really been away?  And if I really have, am I to be permitted to take your hand, and asked how I really do? as if you really cared?”

“Really,” was her answer, “you see we have just received our fall fashions, and it is not the fall style this year to give and take hands after an absence.”

“A-h! how popular that will be with poor masculines!  Is that to be worn by all of you?”

“I don’t know,” said Kate; “it is not fall with some of us yet.”

“Thank you! and may I ask Miss Markham if it was the spring and summer style not to say good-bye at a parting?”

The tone was gay, but there was something more in it, and the girl replied:  “That depends upon the lady, I presume; both styles may be varied at her pleasure.”

“Ah, I think I understand!  You are kind to explain.”

“Mr. Barton,” said Lizzie, “Flora and I here cannot determine about our colors”—­holding up some gay ribbons—­“and the rest can’t help us out.  What do you think of them?”

“That they are brilliant,” answered Barton, looking both steadily and innocently in the faces, in a way that deepened their hues.

“Oh, no! these ribbons?” exclaimed the blushing girl, thrusting them towards his eyes.

“Indeed I am color blind, though not wholly blind to color.”  And a little ripple of laughter ran over the bright group, and then they all laughed again.

Can any one tell why a young girl laughs, save that she is happy and joyous?  If she does or says anything, she laughs, and if she don’t, she laughs, and her companions laugh because she does, and then they all laugh, and then laugh again because they laughed before, and then they look at each other and laugh again; thus they did now, and Barton could no more tell what they were laughing at than could they; he was not so foolishly jealous as to imagine that they were laughing at him.